Horváth János: Kunffy Lajos, 1993

LAJOS KUNFFY OF SOMOGYTUR (1869—1962) WRITTEN BY JÁNOS HORVÁTH TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY CHARLES DE KUNFFY Lajos Kunffy this celebrated Hungarian artist was witness to nearly a century of extraordinary artistic and historical changes. As an artist he bequeathed to posterity a highly valuable legacy, the artwork of a lifetime, and as a member of the intellectual aristocracy he left behind an exemplary record of public life. His career began in a small Hungarian village during the last third of the nineteenth century. He spent nearly twenty years in the capital city of art, Paris, where he was a regular contributor to the exhibitions of the salons. The themes of his cheerfully sunlit, impressionistic paintings and their subject matter came from the country life he observed on his estates. Peasants in their native costumes and Gypsies in their vividly colored clothing gave his pictures an exotic attractiveness similar to that found in the canvasses of Simon Lucien, or in Cottet's with the people of Brittany, or in the pictures of Remington with American Indians. During the height of his career Kunffy was a member of the select artistic and intellectual elite of French society and was also an intimate of Rodin, Munkácsy, Besnard, Lhermitte, La Touche and Simon Lucien. Having proven to be a clever cultural diplomat, he was awarded the Cross of the Knights of the French Legion of Honor. Owing to changes in society and national borders that resulted from the two World Wars, he was gradually isolated from Europe. His titled, large landholdings were confiscated by the Communist government after the Second World War. From then on only the respect he KUNFFY A SOMOGYTÚRI MŰTERMÉBEN, fotó 1958 earned through his art saved him from political persecution. He is remembered by those now living as a peaceful, white-bearded patriarch, whose home in Somogytur was transformed into a pleasant museum. Those, however, who would also read the artist's remembrances will enjoy and be surprised by behindthescenes secrets they hold. In this booklet we will, among other things, rely on Lajos Kunffy's own words to provide the categorizations of his art according to various periods and we will attempt to convey the mood of these eras as they are revealed in his writings. Lajos Kunffy of Somogytur was born into an art-loving family on October 2, 1869. His mother, who gave birth to four children, made life more colorful and spiritually richer for her family by creating folk-art embroideries and by